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The Ffestiniog Story
The Ffestiniog Railway was 150 years old on 20th April 1986. Now, one of the top ten tourist attractions in Wales, it was originally built to carry slate from the quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog to the harbour at Porthmadog. It used horses to pull empty wagons uphill and loaded trains ran by gravity over a superbly surveyed route high on the side of the Dwyryd Valley. Carried in places by the tallest dry-stone embankments in the world, this mountainside line affords excellent views of the spectacular surrounding countryside, today being the railway's principal asset.
In 1863 steam locomotives were introduced, the first for regular traffic on a gauge as narrow as 2ft, copied from the lines already in use in the quarries. The railway began its first legal passenger service in 1865, becoming the world's first narrow-gauge public railway. In 1869 it introduced the Fairlie articulated steam locomotive and in a series of trials held in 1869/70 attracted worldwide attention, having an influence on the course of railway development in many countries. The first integral metal-framed bogie passenger coaches were introduced in 1872, these being the first bogie coaches in regular service in Britain, and together with the Fairlie locomotive, were the ancestors of the modern railway train. The 1872 coaches are still in use, as are two Fairlie locomotives; though rare as a steam locomotive, the Fairlie principle of mounting the locomotive on two power bogies is now universally adopted for diesel and electric traction
From its zenith in the 1880s the Ffestiniog Railway declined, with the local slate industry, and finally closed in August 1946. The Festiniog Railway Company is, however, a statutory body with no powers to abandon the railway, which lay derelict for eight years until control of the company passed to its present enthusiastic owners. Restoration, using volunteer labour, began in 1954. The first passenger trains ran over a mile of track in 1955, but it took twenty-eight hard years before the service was finally restored over the full fourteen miles to Blaenau Ffestiniog. In that time, the railway and its army of volunteer helpers had to build 2 miles of new railway to bypass a reservoir, which included boring a 300-metre tunnel, besides restoring and operating the remainder of the old line.
Services now run daily from March to November, connecting with British Rail at both ends of the line. As in the past, the F.R. continues to add 'firsts" to its record and in 1985 commissioned the first fully computerised booking office in Britain. The Ffestiniog is not just a railway to enjoy from the carriage, either; it is a railway you can become involved in practically. There are few tasks that cannot be tackled by a competent volunteer, and in the height of summer the small permanent staff is reinforced heavily by an influx of amateur railwaymen from all walks of life. They are not just playing trains, for the operation of a public railway is a serious business subject to the same regulations as British Rail, and the Ffestiniog Railway prides itself upon the professional appearance of its operations. To give but one example, its veteran steam locomotives regularly run 10,000 miles or more per annum, the highest annual mileage by far of any preserved locomotives anywhere in the world.
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